The Contribution of Cultural and Creative Industries to the County's Economy: A Case of Two Tourism Regions in Croatia

The objective of the paper is to analyse the characteristics of cultural and creative industries (CCI) in two Croatian counties – the Istria and Šibenik-Knin Counties, as well as to assess their contribution to the county and national economy. Given that an important part of the CCI sector consists of public cultural activities directly financed from public funds, an analysis of public allocations for culture from the state and local budgets is also conducted. Besides analysing the characteristics and contribution of CCIs, we also investigate the impact of CCIs on the economic development of the two counties in question by employing fixed-effects regression for the period 2017– 2022. The results indicate that CCIs are an important part of the economy of both counties, where the contribution of CCIs in Istria County is stronger than in Šibenik-Knin County. The main factor through which CCIs have a significant and positive impact on the economic development in both counties is the gross added value of CCIs per capita. The results also show that other factors such as tourist arrivals (for Istria County) and public expenditure for culture (for Šibenik-Knin County) play significant roles in their respective county models.